PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Seasonal movements of Bronze Age transhumant pastoralists in western Xinjiang 1,2 1,3 1 4 4 Peter JiaID , Gino CaspariID *, Alison BettsID , Bahaa Mohamadi , Timo Balz , Dexin Cong5, Hui Shen6, Qi Meng1 1 Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2 School of Culture and History, Henan University, Kaifeng, China, 3 Institute of Archaeological Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 4 State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, 5 Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing, a1111111111 China, 6 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China a1111111111 *
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[email protected] a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 Abstract The paper explores seasonal movements of Bronze Age mobile pastoralists in the western Tianshan mountainous region of Xinjiang, China. Fieldwork by a team from the Institute of OPEN ACCESS Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) and the University of Syd- Citation: Jia P, Caspari G, Betts A, Mohamadi B, ney, Australia have identified cyclical land use practices associated with the Andronovo cul- Balz T, Cong D, et al. (2020) Seasonal movements tural complex. Their pattern of seasonal movements has been reconstructed through of Bronze Age transhumant pastoralists in western ethnographic studies and analysis of modern snow and grass cover. Using this detailed Xinjiang. PLoS ONE 15(11): e0240739. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240739 combination of data, the study defines requirements for seasonal pastures±winter, summer and spring/autumn±and shows a clear correlation between modern land use and seasonal Editor: Xinyi Liu, Washington University in Saint Louis, UNITED STATES patterns of movement in the Bronze Age.